1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to improvements in data processing systems. More particularly, the invention is directed to eliminating performance bottlenecks and reducing system size and cost by increasing the memory, processing, and I/O capabilities that can be integrated into a monolithic region.
2. Description of Prior Art
Early computer circuits were made of separate components wired together on a macroscopic scale. The integrated circuit combined all circuit components (resistors, capacitors, transistors, and conductors) onto a single substrate, greatly decreasing circuit size and power consumption, and allowing circuits to be mass produced already wired together. This mass production of completed circuitry initiated the astounding improvements in computer performance, price, power and portability of the past few decades. But lithographic errors have set limits on the complexity of circuitry that can be fabricated in one piece without fatal flaws.
To eliminate these flaws large wafers of processed substrate are diced into chips so that regions with defects can be discarded. Improvements in lithography allow continually increasing levels of integration on single chips, but demands for more powerful and more portable systems are increasing faster still.
Portable computers using single-chip processors can be built on single circuit boards today, but because lithographic errors limit the size and complexity of today""s chips, each system still requires many separate chips. Separate wafers of processor, memory, and auxiliary chips are diced into their component chips, a number of which are then encapsulated in bulky ceramic packages and affixed to an even bulkier printed circuit board to be connected to each other, creating a system many orders of magnitude bigger than its component chips. Using separate chips also creates off-chip data flow bottlenecks because the chips are connected on a macroscopic rather than a microscopic scale, which severely limits the number of interconnections. Macroscopic inter-chip connections also increase power consumption. Furthermore, even single board systems use separate devices external to that board for system input and output, further increasing system size and power consumption. The most compact systems thus suffer from severe limits in battery life, display resolution, memory, and processing power.
Reducing data traffic across the off-chip bottleneck and increasing processor-to memory connectivity through adding memory to processor chips is known in the art. Both Intel""s new Pentium (tm) processor and IBM/Motorola/Apple""s PowerPC (tm) 601 processor use 256-bit-wide data paths to small on-chip cache memories to supplement their 64-bit wide paths to their systems"" external-chip main memories (xe2x80x9cRISC Drives PowerPCxe2x80x9d, BYTE, August 1993, xe2x80x9cIntel Launches a Rocket in a Socketxe2x80x9d, BYTE, May 1993). Chip size limits, however, prevent the amount of on-chip memory from exceeding a tiny fraction of the memory used in a whole system.
Parallel computer systems are well known in the art. IBM""s 3090 mainframe computers, for example, use parallel processors sharing a common memory. While such shared memory parallel systems do remove the von Neumann uniprocessor bottleneck, the funneling of memory access from all the processors through a single data path rapidly reduces the effectiveness of adding more processors. Parallel systems that overcome this bottleneck through the addition of local memory are also known in the art. U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,000, for example, discloses a system using both local and shared memory, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,591,981 discloses a local memory system where each xe2x80x9clocal memory processorxe2x80x9d is made up of a number of smaller processors sharing that xe2x80x9clocalxe2x80x9d memory. But in these systems the local processor/memory clusters contain many separate chips, and while each processor has its own local input and output, that input and output is done through external devices. This requires complex macroscopic (and hence off-chip-bottleneck-limited) connections between the processors and external chips and devices, which rapidly increases the cost and complexity of the system as the number of processors is increased.
Massively parallel computer systems are also known in the art. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,622,632, 4,720,780, 4,873,626, and 4,942,517, for instance, disclose examples of systems comprising arrays of processors where each processor has its own memory. While these systems do remove the von Neumann uniprocessor bottleneck and the multi-processor memory bottleneck for parallel applications, the processor/memory connections and the interprocessor connections are still limited by the off-chip data path bottleneck. Also, the output of the processors is still gathered together and funneled through a single data path to reach a given external output device, which creates an output bottleneck that limits the usefulness of such systems for output-intensive tasks. The use of external input and output devices further increases the size, cost and complexity of the overall systems.
Even massively parallel computer systems where separate sets of processors have separate paths to I/O devices, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,591,980, 4,933,836 and 4,942,517 and Thinking Machines Corp.""s CM-5 Connection Machine (tm), rely on connections to external devices for their input and output (xe2x80x9cMachines from the Lunatic Fringexe2x80x9d, TIME, Nov. 11, 1991). Having each processor set connected to an external I/O device also necessitates having a multitude of connections between the processor array and the external devices, thus greatly increasing the overall size, cost and complexity of the system. Furthermore, output from multiple processors to a single output device, such as an optical display, is still gathered together and funneled through a single data path to reach that device. This creates an output bottleneck that limits the usefulness of such systems for display-intensive tasks.
Multi-processor chips are also known in the art. U.S. Pat. No. 5,239,654, for example, calls for xe2x80x9cseveralxe2x80x9d parallel processors on an image processing chip. Even larger numbers of processors are possiblexe2x80x94Thinking Machines Corp.""s original CM-1 Connection Machine, for example, used 32 processors per chip to reduce the numbers of separate chips and off-chip connections needed for (and hence the size and cost of) the system as a whole (U.S. Pat. No. 4,709,327). The chip-size limit, however, forces a severe trade-off between number and size of processors in such architectures; the CM-1 chip used 1-bit processors instead of the 8-bit to 32-bit processors in common use at that time. But even for massively parallel tasks, trading one 32-bit processor per chip for 32 one-bit processors per chip does not produce any performance gains except for those tasks where only a few bits at a time can be processed by a given processor. Furthermore, these nonstandard processors do not run standard software, requiring everything from operating systems to compilers to utilities to be re-written, greatly increasing the expense of programming such systems. Newer massively parallel systems such as the CM-5 Connection Machine use standard 32-bit full-chip processors instead of multi-processor chips.
Input arrays are also known in the art. State-of-the-art video cameras, for example, use arrays of charge-coupled devices (CCD""s) to gather parallel optical inputs into a single data stream. Combining an input array with a digital array processor is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,908,751, with the input array and processor array being separate devices and the communication between the arrays being shown as row-oriented connections, which would relieve but not eliminate the input bottleneck. Input from an image sensor to each processing cell is mentioned as an alternative input means in U.S. Pat. No. 4,709,327, although no means to implement this are taught. Direct input arrays that do analog filtering of incoming data have been pioneered by Carver Mead, et al., (xe2x80x9cThe Silicon Retinaxe2x80x9d, Scientific American, May 1991). While this direct-input/analog filtering array does eliminate the input bottleneck to the array, these array elements are not suitable for general data processing. All these arrays also lack direct output means and hence do not overcome the output bottleneck, which is far more critical in most real world applications. The sizes of these arrays are also limited by lithographic errors, so systems based on such arrays are subjected to the off-chip data flow bottleneck. Reliance on connections to external output devices also increases the overall size, cost and complexity of those systems.
Output arrays where each output element has its own transistor are also known in the art and have been commercialized for flat-panel displays, and some color displays use display elements with one transistor for each color. Since the output elements cannot add or subtract or edit-and-pass-on a data stream , such display elements can do no data decompression or other processing, so the output array requires a single uncompressed data stream, creating a band-width bottleneck as array size increases. These output arrays also have no defect tolerance, so every pixel must be functional or an obvious xe2x80x9cholexe2x80x9d will show up in the array. This necessity for perfection creates low yields and high costs for such displays.
Systems that use wireless links to communicate with external devices are also known in the art. Cordless data transmission devices, including keyboards and mice, hand-held computer to desk-top computer data links, remote controls, and portable phones are increasing in use every day. But increased use of such links and increases in their range and data transfer rates are all increasing their demands for bandwidth. Some electromagnetic frequency ranges are already crowded, making this transmission bottleneck increasingly a limiting factor. Power requirements also limit the range of such systems and often require the transmitter to be physically pointed at the receiver for reliable transmission to occur.
Integrated circuits fabricated from amorphous and polycrystalline silicon, as opposed to crystalline silicon, are also known in the art. These substrates, though, are far less consistent and have lower electron mobility, making it difficult to fabricate fast circuits without faults. Since circuit speed and lithographic errors cause significant bottlenecks in today""s computers, the slower amorphous and polycrystalline silicon integrated circuits have not been competitive with crystalline silicon in spite of their potentially lower fabrication costs.
Fault-tolerant architectures are also known in the art. The most successful of these are the spare-line schemes used in memory chips. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,860,831 and 4,791,319, for example, disclose spare-line schemes suitable for such chips. In practice, a 4 megabit chip, for example, might nominally have 64 cells each with 64 k active bits of memory in a 256xc3x97256 bit array, while each cell physically has 260 bits by 260 bits connected in a manner that allows a few errors per cell to be corrected by substituting spare lines, thus saving the cell. This allows a finer lithography to be used, increasing the chip""s memory density and speed. Since all bits in a memory chip have the same function, such redundancy is relatively easy to implement for memory. Processors, however, have large numbers of circuits with unique functions (often referred to in the art as random logic circuits), and a spare circuit capable of replacing one kind of defective circuit cannot usually replace a different kind, making these general spare-circuit schemes impractical for processors.
Redundancy schemes that handle random logic circuits by replicating every circuit are also known in the art. These incorporate means for selecting the output of a correctly functioning copy of each circuit and ignoring or eliminating the output of a faulty copy. Of these replication schemes, circuit duplication schemes, as exemplified by U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,798,976 and 5,111,060, use the least resources for redundancy, but provide the least protection against defects because two defective copies of a given circuit (or a defect in their joint output line) still creates an uncorrectable defect. Furthermore, it is necessary to determine which circuits are defective so that they can be deactivated. Many schemes therefore add a third copy of every circuit so that a voting scheme can automatically eliminate the output of a single defective copy. This, however, leads to a dilemma: When the voting is done on the output of large blocks of circuitry, there is a significant chance that two out of the three copies will have defects, but when the voting is done on the output of small blocks of circuitry, many voting circuits are needed, increasing the likelihood of errors in the voting circuits themselves! Ways to handle having two defective circuits out of three (which happens more frequently than the 2 defects out of 2 problem that the duplication schemes face) are also known. One tactic is to provide some way to eliminate defective circuits from the voting, as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 4,621,201. While this adds a diagnostic step to the otherwise dynamic voting process, it does allow a triplet with two defective members to still be functional. Another tactic, as exemplified by U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,543,048 and 4,849,657, calls for N-fold replication, where N can be raised to whatever level is needed to provide sufficient redundancy. Not only is a large N an inefficient use of space, but it increases the complexity of the voting circuits themselves, and therefore the likelihood of failures in them. This problem can be reduced somewhat, although not eliminated, by minimizing the complexity of the voting circuits, as U.S. Pat. No. 4,617,475 does through the use of an analog differential transistor added to each circuit replicate, allowing a single analog differential transistor to do the voting regardless of how many replicates of the circuit there are. Yet another tactic is to eliminate the xe2x80x9cvotingxe2x80x9d by replicating circuits at the gate level to build the redundancy into the logic circuit themselves. U.S. Pat. No. 2,942,193, for example, calls for quadruplication of every circuit, and uses an interconnection scheme that eliminates faulty signals within two levels of where they originate. While this scheme can be applied to integrated circuits (although it predates them considerably), it requires four times as many gates, each with twice as many inputs, as equivalent non-redundant logic, increasing the circuit area and power requirements too much to be practical. All these N-fold redundancy schemes also suffer from problems where if the replicates are physically far apart, gathering the signals requires extra wiring, creating propagation delays, while if the replicates are close together, a single large lithographic error can annihilate the replicates en masse, thus creating an unrecoverable fault.
Cell-based fault-tolerant architectures are also known in the art. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,913,072 and 5,203,005, for example, both disclose fault-tolerant schemes that connect whole wafers of cells into single fault-free cell chains, even when a significant number of the individual cells are defective. The resulting one-dimensional chains, however, lack the direct addressability needed for fast memory arrays, the positional regularity of array cells needed for I/O arrays, and the two-dimensional or higher neighbor-to-neighbor communication needed to efficiently handle most parallel processing tasks. This limits the usefulness of these arrangements low or medium performance memory systems and to tasks dominated by one-dimensional or lower connectivity, such as sorting data. U.S. Pat. No. 4,800,302 discloses a global address bus based spare cell scheme that doesn""t support direct cell-to-cell connections at all, requiring all communications between cells to be on the global bus. Addressing cells through a global bus has significant drawbacks; it does not allow parallel access of multiple cells, and comparing the cell""s address with an address on the bus introduces a delay in accessing the cell. Furthermore, with large numbers of cells it is an inefficient user of power; in order for N cells to determine whether they are being addressed, each must check a minimum of log2(N) address bits (in binary systems), so an address signal requires enough power to drive N*log2(N) inputs. This is a high price in a system where all intercell signals are global.
Even cell-based fault-tolerant architectures that support two-dimensional connectivity are known in the art. U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,308 discloses a cell array that can be organized into a series of fault-free linear cell chains or a two-dimensional array of fault-free cells with neighbor-to-neighbor connections. Several considerations, however, diminish its applicability to large high-performance array at all but the lowest defect densities. While the cells can be addressed through their row and column connections IPNxe2x86x92OPS and IPExe2x86x92OPW, this addressing is not direct in that a signal passing from West to East encounters two 3-input gates per cell, (even assuming zero-delay passage through the processor itself). Thus while large cells create high defect rates, small cells sizes create significant delays in the propagation of signals across the array. Consider, for example, a wafer with I defect per square centimeter, which is reasonable for a leading edge production technology. On a 5xe2x80x3 wafer an 80 square centimeter rectangular array can be fabricated. Now consider what size cells might be suitable. With an 8 by 10 array of 1 cm square cells (less than half the size of a Pentium chip) the raw cell yield would be around 30%, or an average of 24 or 25 good cells. Only when every single column had at least one good cell, and that spaced by at most one row from the nearest good cell in each of the neighboring columns, could even a single 1xc3x978 fault-free cell xe2x80x9carrayxe2x80x9d could be formed. This should happen roughly 10% of the time, for an abysmal overall 1% array cell yield. With wafer scale integration, however, smaller cell sizes are useful as the cells do not have to be diced and reconnected. As cell size decreases, yields grow rapidly, but the propagation delays grow, too. With 5 mm square cells a 16xc3x9720 cell array would fit, and the raw cell yield would be almost 75%, so most arrays would have around 240 good cells. While an average column would have 15 good cells, it is the column with the fewest good cells that determine the number of rows in the final array. This would typically be 10 or 11 rows, creating 16xc3x9710 or 16xc3x9711 arrays. This would be a 50%-55% array cell yield, which is quite reasonable. But row-addressing signals propagated across the array would pass sequentially through up to 30 gates, creating far too long a delay for high-performance memory systems.
This interconnection scheme also has problems when used for processing cells, although it is targeted for that use. The cell bypassing scheme does support two-dimensional neighbor-to-neighbor connectivity, and could support a column-oriented bus for each column, but it cannot support a corresponding row-oriented bus without the 2-gate-per-cell delay. Three dimensional connectivity could be accomplished only by extending the bypass scheme to physically three dimensional arrays, which cannot be made with current lithography, and higher-dimensional connectivities such as hyper-cube connectivity are out of the question. Even for two-dimensional neighbor-to-neighbor connectivity, this scheme has certain drawbacks. While the row-oriented neighbor-to-neighbor connections never span a distance larger than one diagonal cell-center to cell-center, column-oriented neighbor-to-neighbor connections can be forced to span several defective or inactive cells. All intercell timing and power considerations must take into account the maximum capacitances and resistances likely to be encountered on such a path. This scheme also shifts the position of every cell in the entire rest of the column (relative to its same-logical-row neighbors) for each defective cell that is bypassed, which propagates the effects of each defective cell far beyond the neighborhood of the defect. This multi-cell shift also prevents this scheme from being useful in arrays where physical position of array cells is important, such as direct input or output cell arrays.
It is therefore one object of the present invention to provide a highly redundant network of cells that allows a large array of cells to be organized from a monolithically fabricated unit, with at least moderate yields of defect-free arrays in spite of significant numbers of defective cells, where all array cells can be directly addressed and have access to a global data bus, allowing the cell array to be used as a compact high-performance memory system.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a highly redundant network of cells that allows a large array of cells to be organized on a monolithically fabricated unit, with at least moderate yields of defect-free arrays in spite of significant numbers of defective cells, where all array cells have bi-directional communication with their neighboring array cells in at least 3 total dimensions (of which least two dimensions are physical) allowing the cell array to be efficiently used as a parallel processing system on massively parallel tasks of 3-dimensional or higher connectivity.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a highly redundant network of cells that allows a large array of cells to be organized on a monolithically fabricated unit, with at least moderate yields of defect-free arrays in spite of significant numbers of defective cells, where spare cells replacing defective cells are physically neighbors of the defective cells they replace, allowing the spare cells to act as direct replacements with little displacement in situations where physical location is important, such as video displays and direct input image processing arrays.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a cell-based fault-tolerant array containing sufficient redundancy to allow cells large enough to contain RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) or CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) processors to be used while maintaining at least moderate yields on up to wafer-sized arrays.
It is further object of the present invention to provide a highly parallel or massively parallel data processing system that reduces data contention across the off-chip data bottleneck, and increases the number and/or width of data paths available between processors and memories, through the integration of all main memory and all processors into a single monolithic entity.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide an ultra-high-resolution display containing a monolithic array of cells where each cell has optical direct output means, and memory and processing means just sufficient to extract a datum from a compressed data stream and to transmit that datum through the direct output means, thus enabling the cells to be smaller than the obvious optical defect size with today""s lithography.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an serial or parallel data processing system where all lithographic components can be fabricated in the same monolithic region, allowing all lithographic components to be fabricated already connected, and also to be interconnected on a microscopic scale.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an ultra-high-resolution display containing a monolithic array of cells where each cell has optical direct output means, and memory and/or processing capacity in excess of that which the cell needs to manage its direct outputs, allowing the array to perform other functions for the system as a whole, and thus increasing the fraction of a monolithically fabricated system that can be devoted to the display.
It is another object of the present invention to overcome the drawbacks in current parallel processing systems by providing a monolithic highly parallel or massively parallel data processing system containing an array of cells where each cell has direct output means, input means, and means for sufficient memory and processing to perform general data processing, allowing the array to handle a wide range of parallel processing tasks without processor, memory, off-chip, or output bottlenecks.
Another object of the present invention to provide a monolithic array of cells where each cell has direct input means, direct output means and means for memory and processing, allowing the array to communicate with external devices without physical connections to those devices.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a parallel data processing architecture that minimizes the distances between input, output, memory and processing means, allowing less power to be consumed and less heat to be generated during operation.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a data processing system that dynamically focuses wireless transmissions to external devices to minimize bandwidth contention and power requirements through monolithically integrated dynamically focusing phased arrays.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a data processing architecture that reduces system design costs and simplifies the implementation of continuous manufacturing processes through the at-least-linear replication of all components.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a data processing architecture that maximizes system speed relative to component speed, thereby making practical the fabrication medium-performance systems from lower-cost, but slower, materials.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method for implementing any and all of the aforementioned objects of the present invention in single thin sheet.
In accordance with one aspect of the invention, there is thus provided an apparatus containing a monolithic redundant network of cells from which a large defect-free array of cells can be organized, where each array cell can be directly addressed and can receive and send data through a global data bus, allowing the combined memories of the array cells to be used as a single monolithic high performance, high capacity memory module.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, there is thus provided an apparatus containing a monolithic redundant network of cells from which a large defect-free array of cells can be organized, where each array cell has direct bi-directional communication with its nearest neighbor cells in at least three total dimensions, at least two of which are physical, enabling the array as a whole to efficiently process parallel tasks of three-dimensional or higher neighbor-to-neighbor connectivity.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the invention, there is thus provided an apparatus containing a monolithic redundant network of cells from which a large defect-free array of cells can be organized, where all spare cells that replace defective cells to form the defect-free array are physical neighbors of the cells they replace, enabling the array to be used in situations where physical position is important, such as direct input or direct output image processing arrays.
In accordance with still another aspect of the invention, there is thus provided a data processing system containing a monolithic redundant network of cells interconnected in a manner such that at least three spare cells are capable of replacing the functions of any defective cell in organizing a defect free array, allowing cells large enough to support RISC or CISC processors to be used while maintaining at least moderate overall yields of defect-free arrays.
In accordance with a further aspect of the invention, there is thus provided a fault tolerant architecture that allows all lithographic components of a serial or parallel data processing system to be monolithically fabricated with high enough yields that all these components can be integrated into the same monolithic region with acceptable yields of the region as a whole, allowing all lithographic components to be fabricated already interconnected on a microscopic scale.
In accordance with a further aspect of the invention, there is thus provided an apparatus containing a monolithic redundant network of cells from which a large defect-free array of cells can be organized, with each array cell having direct optical output means and memory and/or processing means beyond what it needs to perform its display functions, allowing the array to perform functions for the system as a whole in addition to displaying data, and thus allowing the display array to occupy a larger fraction of a monothically fabricated region that contains means for those functions in addition to direct output means.
In accordance with a further aspect of the invention, there is thus provided an apparatus containing a monolithic redundant network of cells from which a large defect-free array of cells can be organized, with each array cell having access to a global input and having direct optical output means as well as minimal memory and processing means, allowing the array to receive, decompress and display data transmitted by another apparatus, such as a computer, a TV station or a VCR.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, there is thus provided an apparatus containing a monolithic redundant network of cells from which a large defect-free array of cells can be organized, with each cell having means for communication with neighboring cells as well as direct optical output means and minimal memory and processing means, allowing the array to receive, decompress and display a large number of parallel input streams transmitted by another apparatus such as a computer or a VCR.
The present invention also provides, in another aspect, a data processing system containing a monolithic redundant network of cells from which a large defect-free array of cells can be organized, each cell having its own direct input means and direct output means as well as means for memory, means for processing and means for communication with neighboring cells, each cell being, in short, a complete miniature data processing system in its own right, as well as being part of a larger network, providing a highly parallel or massively parallel data processing system that overcomes the I/O and memory bottlenecks that plague parallel processors as well as the von Neumann bottleneck of single processor architectures, and eliminating physical interconnections between the processor/memory array and external input and output devices.
In accordance with still another aspect of the invention, there is thus provided a data processing system containing a monolithic redundant network of cells from which a large defect-free array of cells can be organized, where the array cells have direct inputs and/or direct outputs, and where spare cells have no direct I/O""s of there own but use the direct inputs and outputs of the defective cells, allowing the surface of the network as a whole to be substantially covered with direct inputs and/or outputs in use by array cells.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the invention, there is thus provided a data processing system containing a monolithic redundant network of cells from which a large defect-free array of cells can be organized, where the array cells have fault-tolerant direct inputs and/or direct outputs, and where spare cells have no direct I/O""s of their own but use the direct inputs and outputs of the defective cells, allowing the surface of the network as a whole to be substantially covered with direct inputs and/or outputs in use by array cells, without significant defects in the continuity of those direct inputs and/or outputs.
In accordance with still another aspect of the invention, there is thus provided a data processing system containing a monolithic redundant network of cells from which a large defect-free array of cells can be organized, each cell having direct input means and direct output means as well as means for memory, means for processing and means for communication with neighboring cells, where the whole network from which the array is organized can be produced by the at least linear replication of identical units, simplifying the fabrication of the array with continuous linear production.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, there is thus provided a data processing system that uses a monolithic redundant network of cells from which a large defect-free array of cells can be organized to create a parallel data processing system that maximize s system speed relative to component speed, thus allowing systems with acceptable performance to be fashioned from lower-performance substrates such as amorphous or polycrystalline silicon.
The present invention also provides, in another aspect thereof, a method for producing any of the above arrays of cells where the entire array is fabricated as a single thin sheet.
By the expression xe2x80x9cfault tolerantxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant the ability to function correctly in spite of one or more defective components.
By the expression xe2x80x9cdata processing systemxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant a system containing means for input from an external device (such as a human operator), means for memory, means for processing, and means for output to an external device (such as a human eye).
By the expression xe2x80x9cdefect-free arrayxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant an array of cells where all defective array cells have been logically replaced by correctly functioning spare cells.
By the expression xe2x80x9chighly parallelxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant a problem, a task, or a system with at least 16 parallel elements.
By the expression xe2x80x9cmassively parallelxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant a problem, a task, or a system with at least 256 parallel elements.
By the expression xe2x80x9cspare-line schemexe2x80x9d as used herein is meant a fault tolerant architecture that uses one or more spare rows and/or columns of units that can be used to logically replace one or more whole rows and/or columns of units that contain defective units.
By the expression xe2x80x9cdirect replacementxe2x80x9d is meant that when a unit replaces a defective unit it interacts with the rest of system of which the units are a part in a manner logically identical to the way the defective unit would have had it not been defective.
By the expression xe2x80x9carrayxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant elements arranged in a regular pattern of two or three physical dimensions, or as a regular two dimensional pattern on the surface of a three dimensional shape.
By the expression xe2x80x9clarge array of cellsxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant an array of cells that would, at the lithography with which it is made, and not considering spare cells, contain on the average a plurality of defective cells.
By t he expression xe2x80x9cmoderate yieldxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant a yield in excess of 50%.
By the expression xe2x80x9chigh yieldxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant a yield in excess of 90%.
By the expression xe2x80x9cextremely high yieldxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant a yield in excess of 99%.
By the expression xe2x80x9csingle substrate systemxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant a data processing system of which all parts of are manufactured on a single substrate.
By the expression xe2x80x9cdirect output meansxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant means for a given cell to send an output signal to a device outside the array (such as a human eye) without that output signal being relayed through a neighboring cell, through a physical carrier common to that cell and other cells, or through a separate external output device.
By the expression xe2x80x9cdirect input meansxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant means for a given cell to receive an input signal from a device outside the array without that input signal being relayed through a neighboring cell, through a physical carrier common to that cell and other cells, or through a separate external input device.
By the expression xe2x80x9cglobal inputxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant means for an individual cell to pick up an input signal from a physical carrier common to the cells, such as a global data bus.
By the expression xe2x80x9cexternal output devicexe2x80x9d as used here in is meant an output device fabricated as a separate physical entity from the cell array.
By the expression xe2x80x9cexternal input devicexe2x80x9d as used herein is meant an input device fabricated as a separate physical entity from the cell array.
By the expression xe2x80x9ccomplementary direct input means and direct output meansxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant that the direct input means and direct output means of two identical devices with such means could communicate with each other through such means.
By the expression xe2x80x9cmeans for communication with neighboring cellsxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant input means to receive a signal from at least one neighboring cell and output means to send a signal to at least one other neighboring cell without the signals being relayed through a carrier shared with other array cells or through an external device.
By the expression xe2x80x9cfull colorxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant the ability to display or distinguish at least 50,000 different hues (approximately as many shades as the average unaided human eye is capable of distinguishing).
By the expression xe2x80x9cfull motion videoxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant the ability to display at least 50 frames per second (the approximate rate beyond which the average unaided human eye notices no improvement in video quality).
By the expression xe2x80x9cmacroscopicxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant something larger than the resolving power of the average unaided human eye, or larger than 50 microns.
By the expression xe2x80x9cmicroscopicxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant something smaller than the resolving power of the average unaided human eye, or smaller than 50 microns.
By the expression xe2x80x9cthin sheetxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant a sheet whose total thickness is less than 1 centimeter.
By the expression xe2x80x9cregionalxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant something common to or associated with a plurality of cells in a region of the network of cells that is smaller than the entire network.
By the expression xe2x80x9cdirectly addressablexe2x80x9d as used herein is meant that a cell can be addressed through a single off/on signal for each physical array dimension, without any of these addressing signals being relayed through other cells.
By the expression xe2x80x9ctotal dimensionsxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant the number of physical dimensions plus the number of logical dimensions; a 65,536 processor CM-1 Connection Machine computer, for example, has its processors connected in a hypercube of 16 total dimensions, three of which are physical and 13 of which are logical.
By the expression xe2x80x9cphysical connectionxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant a connection that relies on physical contact or sub-micron proximity.
By the expression xe2x80x9cmonolithicxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant a contiguous region of a substrate.
By the expression xe2x80x9cphased arrayxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant an array whose elements individually control the phase or timing of their component of a signal that the array as a whole emits or receives.
By the expression xe2x80x9cdynamic focusingxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant a focusing process whose focal length and/or direction are not predetermined, but are adjusted during operation to focus on a device.
By the expression xe2x80x9cN-fold replicationxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant that N functionally identical copies of a given unit are fabricated for each copy of that unit that is needed an operational system.
By the expression xe2x80x9cN-for-1 redundancyxe2x80x9d as used herein is meant that in the absence of errors any one of N units can fulfill the functions of a given unit.
By the expression xe2x80x9cphysical neighborsxe2x80x9d is meant that the minimum distance between two cells is less than twice the width of a cell in that direction.
The expression xe2x80x9ccould be produced with identical lithographic patternsxe2x80x9d is used solely to describe the similarity of the structures and is not to be construed as limiting the invention to embodiments produced with lithography.